1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a customer-centric approach to interface design (C-CAID) such as for Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems. The customer-centric approach to IVR menu design produces menu options that closely match the various tasks that customers are trying to accomplish when they are accessing an IVR system. The menu options are grouped and ordered by the frequency of the occurrence of specific customer""s tasks, and they are worded in the language used by the customer to facilitate customer understanding of the actual choice provided.
2. Description of the Related Art
Every year, millions of customers call various customer service centers looking for assistance with various tasks that they want to accomplish or looking for answers to various inquiries. The end goal for both the customer and the customer service center is to route the customer""s call to an organizational representative who can best accomplish the customer""s task, while minimizing the number of misdirected calls. Presently, most customer calls are answered by an IVR whose primary function is to direct the call to an appropriate service center. To get a specific call to the correct center, the customers have to map or correlate their reason for calling onto the applicable IVR menu choices.
A major shortcoming of many of the present prior art interface design methods is that these methods simply map customer service departments onto an organizational hierarchy and allocate tasks to these departments based upon this organizational structure. Interface design is often accomplished with little or no empirical data or user centered methodology to guide the design process. If there is a department that handles new accounts, xe2x80x9cNew Accountsxe2x80x9d becomes a menu option and incoming calls are routed to that department. The remaining services provided by the various organizational service centers are allocated accordingly. The interface design is forcibly fit onto the existing organizational structure.
Another shortcoming of this approach is that many of the organizational structure names do not translate easily into language constructs that a user would readily understand. For example, a service organization entitled xe2x80x9cHigh Speed Internet Access Modalitiesxe2x80x9d when converted into a menu option would not convey the same information content to the average user as xe2x80x9cOrdering a new ISDN Linexe2x80x9d.
The underlying problem common to all of the prior art systems is that there is no user data or user information input into systems development in the early design stages. The resulting user interface merely mirrors an organization and there is no customization or optimization folded into the design of the interface. The resulting menu is simply imposed on the user with no consideration or forethought for what are the actual requirements of the user or how to best address the needs of the user.
The goal of an effective interface design methodology is to use as much user input as possible to ensure that users are presented with choices that they need and are able to understand, while simultaneously minimizing and potentially eliminating unproductive time spent looking at and having to choose between selections that do not address or solve the specific problems that customers want solved or addressed. The choice of style, type, structure and language used in the interface design all have a significant impact upon performance.
In contrast to traditional methods of interface design, the current methodology takes into consideration end-user task frequency and applies the language of the user in the design of the interface menu options. It is much easier for a user to understand and make an intelligent and informed selection of a requested service or task in their own words and in the language of more common usage, rather than listening to recitations of technical jargon and organization-specific descriptions. In a conventional system, a user may have to hazard a guess (with the resulting possibility of an incorrect guess) as to which category applies to their particular situation. Such guessing is minimized by the present interface design method.
Therefore, a method is needed to design an interface that maximizes the performance of the users during operation, reduces misrouted calls, and ensures that the users arrive at their desired destination after successfully (i.e., rapidly and directly) navigating through the menuing system. The present customer centric design methodology has been shown to improve system performance by mapping the user""s task representations to the task options of the user interface. The C-CAID approach allows customers to make the correct menu option selection and reach the correct service department without requiring additional assistance or intervention from an operator or customer service representative.
Following the C-CAID approach results in a user interface that the customer can easily understand and successfully navigate. In other words, the interface according to the present invention is designed to be customer friendly. This increases system performance, reduces operational costs, improves customer satisfaction, and leads to general improvements in overall efficiency.
Accordingly, the present invention is directed to a method for designing a user interface and taking into consideration the user""s input in mapping the specific tasks to the interface.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a customer-centric method for designing a menu based option interface. Accordingly, the present invention provides for identifying, categorizing, producing, using, evaluating and comparing the system interface by employing usability tests with actual user task performance data to optimize the system user interface.
The present invention is directed to a method for designing an interface system comprising identifying reasons for a user to interact with the interface system, categorizing the reasons into task categories based at least upon commonality of subject matter, producing menu options based upon the task categories, and organizing the menu options based upon the frequency of occurrence of the task categories.
The method is further directed to evaluating the designed interface system utilizing usability tests to optimize the interface system. Further, the usability tests compare menu options of the designed interface system with an existing interface system. Yet further, evaluating comprises identifying ineffective task categories and menu option combinations.
According to further features of the invention, producing the menu options comprises utilizing customer-centric terminology to produce the menu options and the identified reasons are mapped to an associated menu option that addresses responses to queries represented by the reasons.
According to a feature of the present invention, the interface system comprises an interactive Voice Response (IVR) system.
Additionally, identifying reasons addresses the reasons why a user may access the interface system and defines a relationship between tasks related to the reasons and menu options.
According to a feature of the present invention, the organization of menu options locates the high frequency tasks earlier in the sequence of menu options.
Further, a prediction model based upon expected user task volume and task frequency is utilized to provide an indication of how an interface system will perform. In addition, the cumulative response time (CRT) and routing accuracy are used to evaluate performance of the interface system.
The present invention is directed to a method for designing an interface system, comprising utilizing reasons a user is interfacing with a system to define tasks, determining frequency of task occurrence, categorizing tasks in accordance with the frequency of task occurrence, and utilizing the categorized tasks to design an interface system options menu.
According to a further feature, the tasks are categorized based upon task frequency and call volume.
Additionally, user relevant terms are used in the menu options.
Further, evaluating the performance of the interface system can be by use of an analytic scoring model.
Additionally, utilizing of the categorized tasks can include grouping and ordering the menu options in accordance with a frequency of task occurrence.
Yet further, the menu options can be ordered so that higher frequency tasks are positioned higher in the sequence of options.
Additionally, a prediction model based upon expected user task volume and task frequency can be utilized to provide an indication of how the interface system will perform.
According to the present invention, cumulative response time (CRT) and routing accuracy can be used to evaluate performance of the interface system.
The present invention also is directed to an interface system for performing tasks related to a user""s reasons for interacting with the interface system, the interface system including an ordered set of menu options, wherein the order of the menu options of the set of menu options is determined in accordance with task frequency and each menu option is defined in terms of customer relevant terminology.
Additionally, the menu options can represent tasks categorized according to task frequency and call volume.
Furthermore, the interface can comprise an interactive voice response system.
The foregoing objects are achieved by the present invention. Additional features and advantages of the present invention will be set forth in the description to follow, or may be learned by practice of the invention. The objectives and other advantages of the invention will be realized and attained by the methods particularly pointed out in the written description and claims hereof, together with the appended drawings.
In the following description, the C-CAID of the present invention will be described as applied to a IVR for a telecommunication company small business call center. However, the C-CAID design approach of the present invention is not limited in application to small business call center IVR design. The present design approach may be used in any organization or business unit and is not limited to telephone or telecommunications companies. It can be used for any type of company or governmental unit having need for an interface such as an IVR with which others, such as members of the public (i.e., users) can readily and efficiently interact.
In addition to the IVR system described in this specification, the C-CAID approach may be used to design any man/machine interface, such as one between a computer and a computer operator. In particular this method is also directly applicable to the design of an internet web site map. The C-CAID model can be applied to a wide variety of interface types and modalities. C-CAID could be applied to the design of any human and machine interface such as merely as a non-limiting example, a computer menuing system, an airline reservation system, an on-line shopping or electronic commerce web site, etc.
The C-CAID methodology could also be used in optimizing the interface between two or more machines or devices. In particular this method is also directly applicable to the design of an internet web site map. C-CAID could be used to identify those machine tasks that occur at a greater relative frequency than others and the system could be designed to focus on these tasks and-optimize their operations. For example, additional processing power and reallocation of greater memory resources to perform these higher frequency-of-occurrence tasks could be input into the system design.
The C-CAID methodology used in/by the present invention is organization and system independent. Further, it should be noted that the data assembled, processed and folded into an IVR design can be updated as often as the designer or organization wants. In other words, the IVR can be updated yearly, quarterly, weekly, etc. The system can also be adapted to acquire data and measurement parameters in real time and correspondingly adapt the interface dynamically in light of the acquired information.
It is to be understood that both the foregoing general description and the following detailed description are only exemplary and explanatory, rather than limiting, and are intended to provide further explanation of the invention as claimed.
The accompanying drawings are included to provide a further understanding of the invention and are incorporated in and constitute a part of this specification, illustrating one embodiment of the invention. The drawings, together with the description, serve to explain the principles of the invention.